Reloading for Canadian 303 Ross Rifle

[rayg]

I had posted this on the cast boolits forum but thought it would be of interest to folks here also.
Here's my experience in reloading for the Ross. A few weeks ago I bought a nice MKII Ross. It was one of the 20,000 purchased by the US in 1917 to use in place of the 03 Springfield for training US troops so the 03's could be issued to line troops. The rifle has US proofs.
The Ross had a reputation of being an extremly accurate rifle. Being US issued and consided very accurate were reasons why I wanted one but the Ross suffered grave malfunctions in the trenches in WWI because it was designed for quality controlled close tolerence peace time Canadian 303 cartridges and could not handle the loose tolerence British ammo as well as the mud.
In order to try to correct this situation, the chambers on most or the Ross rifles were reamed out larger but eventually they were replaced by the Lee Enfield and the Ross only used in the sniper role.
I miked the bore of my Ross and the bore was .302 and the grooves a true .312.
My three Enfields mike out as the bores at .305 and grooves .314.
With the smaller dia bores I can see why the Ross's shoot so well.

I form fired a case in mine to see if the chamber had been reamed out and it had been. I then loaded up some test rds using 20grs of 4227 powder behind a beagled 311413 sized 312. and a 314299 sized at .314. It was cold at the range, in the 30's, so only fired 10 of each at 35 yrs to see how they functioned and both bullets grouped well.

The cases were expanded a lot but I figured this wouldn't be too much of problem as I would just back the sizing die out enough to just neck size and not full length the case. I didn't want to work the cases too much so they would last.

However when I backed the die out enough to only size the neck I found that the overall dia of the case had expanded so much that when I tried to put the case into the die enough to just size the neck I had to use force to get the case far enough into the die to just size the neck. In doing so I found that I was reducing the diameter of the case below the neck by .020. So in effect I was working the brass much more then I wanted if I expected to get the brass to last for many reloads.
For once my brain worked and as I also reload for 7.7. Jap and have a neck sizing die for that caliber. And as the dia of the Jap case is larger the the .303 case and the neck sized dia even more so. I tried a couple of the just fired .303 cases in the 7.7 die and it worked beautifully by just sizing the neck and not touching the body. Thus a minimum of working the case. You can see the differences in the shoulders of the fired case which I already reloaded, and an unfired case.
Any suggestions would be welcomed, Ray
The attched photo shows the fired ross case compared to a new unfired case. Keep in mind the it would not look as bad next to another case that had been fired in an Enfield as that case would have expanded quite a bit also. Ray

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